


Oh when the dead come marching in

by indelibleangel (InfallibleAngel)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: And there are ghosts, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Season 1 gang baby, Spoilers for Season 1, WARNING THIS IS SORTA SAD, and this fic is for them, bc im a nerd, mentions of canon typical violence and pain, so i guess it's season 2 gang?, syntax squad, well this starts after 39, yeah Sasha is super dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfallibleAngel/pseuds/indelibleangel
Summary: When good little girls are killed, they are supposed to die quietly and inspire acts of great bravery. Sasha James has never considered herself a good little girl.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker
Comments: 11
Kudos: 51





	Oh when the dead come marching in

**Author's Note:**

> this drabble is heavily inspired by RP Twitter (the syntax gang in particular) bc im obsessed and predictible as a person.

_It hurts._ That’s the first thing she thinks as soon as she wakes up. Or well, not thinks since thinking is a privilege reserved for the living, but there isn’t anyone there to explain and she only has her incomplete human vocabulary to grapple with concepts she has no words for. She hopes it stops hurting soon. It doesn’t.

They all welcome the thing that hurt her into their arms and she doesn’t understand at first. How they can celebrate the life of her killer, call it Sasha, ask it if it is alright. Then she remembers the statement about the table and puts two and two together. The thing has slipped into the void created by her absence and the universe has bent itself to accommodate it. _Disgusting._

The worst part— it is the only thing that can see her.

Its lips quirk up slightly as it comes in the morning and sees her sitting at her desk in its place, looking up at it with defiance. It’s a mockery of being a human being, too precise and methodical with perfectly timed, even blinking and measured breathing. Sometimes it turns it’s head _just so_ and the movement is too smooth, too deliberate to be real. It feels like every action it takes is one that is well thought out.

It quirks its lips because it wants her to know it can see her.

She tries contacting Jon first, moving his table two inches to the right because she knows he is the only one who would notice an action like that. It takes her all night to muster up the energy to do it, and she can only manage two inches before she has to give up. No one tells you how hard it is, being dead and living in this world. How her whole body aches with phantom pain.

Jon does notice, but all he does is get a nervous look and then he spends too much time looking for hidden trapdoors around his office. It hurts to watch, in a way that’s different from the constant undulating pain she can’t seem to get used to, and she vows never to scare him like that again.

For Martin, she knocks over a jar of tea leaves and writes ‘SASH DED’ in it, but he’s distracted when he sees it and simply scoops it into his hand and then in the rubbish bin without reading it. The changeling sips from her mug, carefully watching them and it laughs.

She rearranges the pictures on Tim’s desk knocking every one with the imposter off the table and he just mutters something about Jon going through his things with a dark look and puts them back in its place.

It never attempts to talk to her, and every morning it arrives early so it can deal with the mess she makes of her desk the previous night. It does not appear impatient or annoyed with her, and she hates that. It is a monster and she wants it to act monstrous, to rage and break its perfect porcelain mask that no one seems to see through and reveal the ugliness within. It tries leaving out a salt line after reading a book but after she traces ‘FUCK U’ in it, it stops. It tries to lock everything on its desk in the drawers but she empties the rubbish bin on the table instead. Pettiness is for the living. This is a war of attrition and she’s in it for the long haul.

One night, tired of attempting communication she follows the double to her home. It’s a small mercy that this isn’t another house, countries away, with a backyard with mango trees and limes, with a door that only shut in the evening to keep out mosquitoes and too many people to know what to do with. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she had to hear Maria or Rachel or Rhys call that thing her name, consider it their older sister. But they are far away, thrown all over the world with only the occasional phone call connecting them.

She doesn’t know how much the imposter knows about her. Has it stolen, not just her life, but her memories and thoughts? Does it remember collecting shells at the beach, or climbing the mango trees, or laughing with Martin over silly things Tim did or breaking into murder houses? Did her feelings transfer to it as well? The idea makes her want to try and rip its brains out, take back what’s _hers_. She had tried fighting it once before and lost, but you can only kill a person once. Death takes away your life, but it also grants you immortality.

The fake times it’s every move: takes a shower at 8 pm, sits in the dark for 2 hours looking at her collection of secondhand books and then lies awake in her bed. It does not eat, it does not sleep, it does not notice that the batteries in her clock have died. When it is showering she turns the hot water off and it simply continues bathing with the freezing cold water.

Being around her friends, experiencing the miasma of fear that they now reek of hurts too much so she explores the tunnels for a bit. There is an old man with some books and the body of a boy, but nothing interesting so she goes back. It is only the living who are interested in the mysteries of the dead.

Melanie visiting offers her a ray of hope since she does not call the thief her name. The imposter winks at her when Melanie goes in to talk to Jon and she feels something cold slither down her throat. She waits with no breath while they talk and they are so close to figuring it out she could scream. When Melanie leaves, taking her truth with her she does scream. She tries to knock things off Jon’s desk and she sits beside him and cries, her anger and frustration and all this hurt she doesn’t know what to do with, spilling out of her in heaving sobs, but the tears simply don’t come. Death doesn’t even let her _cry_.

You can’t trust the living to do right by you, they are too busy being alive.

Jon just puts a paperweight on the loose papers she tries pushing off his desk.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! Come yell at me about this @InfallibleAngel on twitter


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